Born in Puducherry, India, and raised in the posh suburban Penn Valley area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, M. Night Shyamalan is a film director, screenwriter, producer, and occasional actor, known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots.

He is the son of Jayalakshmi, a Tamil obstetrician and gynecologist, and Nelliate C. Shyamalan, a Malayali doctor. His passion for filmmaking began when he was given a Super-8 camera at age eight, and even at that young age began to model his career on that of his idol, Steven Spielberg. His first film, Praying with Anger (1992), was based somewhat on his own trip back to visit the India of his birth. He raised all the funds for this project, in addition to directing, producing and starring in it. Wide Awake (1998), his second film, he wrote and directed, and shot it in the Philadelphia-area Catholic school he once attended--even though his family was of a different religion, they sent him to that school because of its strict discipline.

Bhavna Vaswani (7 March 1993 - present) ( 3 children)

Trivia

Episcopal Academy, where Shyamalan was sent, is actually a private academy that is affiliated with the Episcopalian Church. It is a private school in Lower Merion, PA, one of the wealthiest suburbs in the U.S. and home at one time or another to the likes of Kobe Bryant and Blythe Danner, among others.
Shymalan lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania, part of the affluent "Main Line" suburban region of Philadelphia.
His parents, wife, and 9 other family members are MDs and/or Ph.Ds.
Name pronounced "SHAH-ma-lawn".
His middle name "Night" was made up during college.
Has made on-screen appearances in several of his own movies, beginning with a lead role in his debut feature, Praying with Anger (1992), and including subsequent supporting roles and cameo appearances in the films The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004) and Lady in the Water (2006).
One of the first scripts he sold was called "Labor of Love" about a man who walks across country to prove his love for his recently deceased wife. As of January 2017, it has still not been made.
Graduated from New York University.
He is an avid comic book fan, which was made apparent in his film Unbreakable (2000).

I play for a living...Success is tied to a feeling of magic, which I can protect.
My hope is we broke so many rules we created a new rule.
The idea is to always go for the thing that's risky. I want to be courageous and original. And original means, you don't know what 'colour' movie you just saw.
Movie making is not like other artforms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be disgested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
All of my movies have made money, and that's important for me - it's my job to make money for the studio...
That's the way stories come to me, they come to me very naturally like that. If this was a story about me and someone else, I would be withholding information about them immediately. The negative thing about the twist is that it's all people are occupied with; all the gentleness in the movie is being overshadowed by the flashy cousin in the sequined vest taking centre-stage. [on surprise endings]
When you say fear of the unknown, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.
I have this whole picture of the film in my head and then I put it all down on paper and storyboard it; showing the movie shot by shot. I like to feel that I have thought of everything before the camera starts rolling but I think that's probably my asset and weakness as a film maker. I am giving my cast a target that I have in my mind and they are trying to hit it. It's positive because I know exactly what I want to get out of my actors and the scene. But the negative is that I might not catch the lightning in the bottle, I may not get that unexpected improvised brilliance.